There’s an area of the brain known as the striatum. This particular area is affected by certain diseases (Parkinsons Disease for example). One of the odd things that happens sometimes when patients are treated with drugs for Parkinsons Disease, is that they can develop strange behaviours in relation to money – compulsive gambling for example.
Some recent studies using fMRI scans, have shown how this area of the brain (the striatum) becomes active when people received either monetary or social rewards
By directly contrasting the brain activities of the same subjects in relation to the delivery of social and monetary rewards, our results clearly show that social approval shares the same neural basis as monetary rewards, thus providing strong support for the idea of a ‘common neural currency’ of reward,” concluded the researchers.
Our findings indicate that the social reward of a good reputation in the eyes of others is processed in an anatomically and functionally similar manner to monetary rewards
The researchers point out that social status affects well-being, morbidity and even survival. They cite an old study conducted on civil servants in England which showed that the lower the employee in the hierarchy, the more likely he or she would develop heart disease.
How others see us, and how that results in our status within society is linked to our neuronal responses to rewards and punishments so intimately, and our nervous system is so linked to our immune system, and our endocrine (hormone) system, that it can actually be a life or death issue.
This shows why it’s important to understand a person, and a person within his or her social networks if we really want to promote health and deal with disease. Simply lowering blood pressure, or cholesterol levels with drugs, is just not enough.
So, Doc, what do you do when people seem to ENJOY being victims?
Take my mother, for example. Though I’m reasonably sure there’s some sort of pathology going on (at least, I HOPE there is; I’d hate to think that she consciously chooses to live as she does), the fact remains that it seems, to me at least, that she enjoys being downtrodden and victimized, to the point where if there’s not a ready crisis available, one will be invented.
I’ve got that same sort of attitude going on in a student of mine. The boy seems to take pride in being, as he calls it, “black, lower class, and under-privileged.” He sets up a very strong, very energetic us-them dichotomy, and uses that to inform his life and his choices.
I agree that one’s social standing has a great deal to do with the overall picture of one’s life – and I also think that has little or nothing to do with actual money. A lot of it, I believe, is being content with where we are and with what we have. It’s that attitude of abundance that I wrote about the other day; I don’t have to live in a palace to believe that I live like a queen.
This victim mentality is really not at all uncommon, is it? It’s a complicated thing though. Partly, it’s that external control thing that William Glasser writes about (see my posts about his work elsewhere on this blog), and partly it’s about avoiding taking responsibility for anything (a kind of immaturity). I do think there are people who are totally committed to this way of experiencing the world. The more extreme examples are best avoided as much as possible, but, often, that’s just not possible. They’re never happy people, these victim-mentality folks, so its pretty easy to feel sorry for them, but they also tend to be terribly irritating which makes it hard to feel sorry for them!
I’m a solutions-focussed sort of a man and when I encounter a complaining victim mentality person I try to draw them into talking about what circumstances make them happy and what they find THEY can do to feel better – just trying to constantly refuse to take on board any stuff they try to dump on me and constantly focus them on thinking about what they, themselves , can do in the situations they don’t like.